JimCarroll

Reinventing brand relevance

March 10, 2009 by JimCarroll

Here’s a clip from a recent keynote in Las Vegas.

I’m challenging the audience to think about the issue of maintaining brand relevance, in the era in which customers increasingly influence the perception of brands through social networking tools.

The key challenge today is preventing a brand from becoming “from the olden days.” I emphasize this with a quote from Multichannel Marketing, April 2008.

“In some ways, brands are like people. They get stuck. They have habits that are hard to break. They don’t always see their blind spots, and they lost touch with their core essence. They resist change. They become irrelevant“

Innovative organizations realize that they need to continuously address the issue of the relevance of their brands, and must work harder than before to keep them “fresh.”

Keynote Case Study: Yum! Brands: Growth Through Volatility Required Speed, Agility and Innovation.

March 4, 2009 by JimCarroll

At Yum! Brands’ global franchise meeting in Las Vegas, I addressed franchise operators across KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut on innovation and growth in a challenging global economy — including rapid consumer change, retail and technology trends, and the impact of social networking on brand image.

The keynote, “Innovation + Growth in a Challenging Global Economy,” Keep growing while consumer expectations, technology and economic conditions were changing at speed.

Keep growing while consumer expectations, technology and economic conditions were changing at speed.

Six trends are shaping that shift.

Consumer Velocity. Restaurant expectations shift faster as convenience, value and experience keep evolving.
Social Brand Influence. Digital conversation can reshape reputation and customer perception in real time.
Digital Ordering. Technology increasingly moves ordering, payment and service into digital channels.
Franchise Agility. Operators need faster local response while protecting the strength of the global brand.
Off-Premise Growth. Takeout, delivery and flexible fulfillment expand how restaurant brands reach customers.
Data-Driven Growth. Better insight helps brands identify demand, opportunity and performance faster.

The future of restaurants is faster, more digital, more agile and more consumer-driven.

Three iconic brands, one shared challenge: growing through global uncertainty means the franchisees who move fastest on local opportunity, not the ones who wait for perfect conditions, come out ahead. You can explore more keynote case studies here.

The insurance industry in 2015

March 3, 2009 by JimCarroll

(A note from Jim: I wrote this post in 2009. It’s getting an extensive number of hits now, in 2015. I was right on some of these trends, but perhaps too soon on some of the rest?)

Back in January of this year, I was invited to address a meeting of insurance executives on behalf of a global consulting company. It was a small but powerful group; in the room were Chief Operating Officers and Chief Information Officers for some of the world’s largest property and casualty insurance companies. (The client that booked me prefers to remain anonymous.)

I was asked to provide my views on the challenges and opportunities that the property & casualty insurance industry might face in 2015. These included a number of issues:

unavailability of niche skills due to increased underwriting complexity. Quite simply, faster change and faster science is leading to unique issues in assessing insurance risk, with the result that skills become far more specialized and unique.

the likely emergence of “social financial widgets” – this is the focus of an upcoming column for one of the publications I write for. Take a look at BestBuy’s Remix project, which allows developers to write code that interacts with the online catalog of BestBuy. Extend that thinking to the insurance in the future: the next generation insurance agent will write their own widgets that allow for the quoting, sale and binding coverage of a policy, within their own social-Website page.
the implications of pervasive connectivity upon the insurance marketplace. We’re entering the era of smart highway infrastructure, and automobiles that increasingly take over responsibility for navigation. What happens with insurance risk as this occurs?
the impact of computational analytics on risk assessment ; quite simply, we’re witnessing the emergence of highly sophisticated analytical programs that can undertake entirely new ways of assessing claims fraud.
the impact of location intelligence and the re-engineering of the underwriting process. I often tell the story of how how some leading edge insurance executives realize that there is an opportunity to link spatial, i.e. Google Maps information, to public databases on crime, education, accidents, health care, income and other factors, in order to come up with new ways of assessing insurance risk.
velocity of brand relevance: any brand today, including insurance products, must be seen to be fresh, up to date, and with the times. The next generation of customer are going to demand insurance products that are interactive, constantly changing to meet new needs, and which keep up to date with fast social and technological change.

We had a wide ranging discussion about opportunities for innovation in the industry, and explored a variety of ideas for distribution channel, underwriting, claims and product innovation. All in all, it was a wonderful event with a lot of unique insight.

Right now, of course, most insurance companies are in a “lock down” mode as they navigate the global recession : but savvy insurance executives know that they need to be planning for these and other key trends soon.

Keynote summary: “Organizations only succeed by risking failure.”

March 2, 2009 by JimCarroll

I was the opening keynote speaker for CropLife Canada back in December; this article just came in, summarizing my keynote:

Jim Carroll’s keynote address on innovation – while offering solid advice for rising above the current economic maelstrom – contained some immutable truths: baby boomers in business could learn a lot from the ‘wired generation’ who have grown up with computer gear virtually fused to their bodies. Representing more than mere gadgetry, this technological panoply is in fact symbolic of an attitude which unselfconsciously embraces change, promotes exploration and
engenders innovation in all possible forms.

The simple, demographic reality, Jim Carroll declared, is that the post-baby boomers “are the folks who are going to play the primary role in moving agriculture forward into the future. This wired generation is taking the reins of power. They inhale change. They breathe by technology.” Agri-business can take a cue from their curiosity and fearlessness by scrutinizing existing corporate notions of innovation, intensifying focus and taking deliberate action.

Jim’s observations as a trend-spotter lead him to state that the economy, by nature, is volatile. It is transitional. Periods of economic crisis have occurred time and again; as such, there is no need for panic, pessimism or what he terms ‘aggressive indecision’.

“My challenge to you is: when do you start to innovate? Are you going to wait until we’re out of this thing? What innovation leaders do is to decide, ‘Okay, we’re in a period of uncertainty, a rough time… but we’re not going to be innovation laggers. We are going to focus on innovation as a core strategy right now.'”

The familiar phrase ‘rapid change’ scarcely hints at today’s rate of change in the marketplace, with emergence of new business, new competitors and ever-expanding consumer choice. Highly accelerated changes in the business arena now call for split-second response, so the all-important question is, ‘How do we become a high-velocity organization?’

“We’re in an era of instant obsolescence,” said Jim, citing media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s avowal that with the world evolving so rapidly, it isn’t necessarily the big organizations that are going to control the future. “It’s the fast organizations, the agile organizations – the organizations that can change quickly who will have a leg up. Fast beats big anytime.”

Stay focused on opportunity. Set bold short-term goals. Commit immediately to three new ideas. Jim urged his audience to reframe the concept of innovation itself by turning fundamental concepts upside down. “Innovators get ahead by looking at the world around them and realizing there is an absolute ﬂood of new ideas and new ways of doing
things. ”

‘Think about our world today compared to ten years ago. Ten years ago, the pace of scientific advance was really, really slow. But compare it to today. Everybody’s plugged in; we’re all plugged into this global idea machine. What that’s doing is speeding up fundamental science on an exponential basis. So structure for velocity, focus on faster knowledge
deployment and partner up to better adapt to what’s coming. Think big by focusing on growth. You have to try to do things you haven’t done before. Innovation is all about risk.”

Focusing on growth in a perilous economy – how innovators win

February 27, 2009 by JimCarroll

There’s a lot of research that goes into every keynote and workshop I undertake. Recently, one key theme has been looking at how innovators break through the recessionary blues, and create new markets and revenue through disruptive innovation. This was the theme of a recent column that I wrote, “Keep Those Ideas Coming.”

While preparing for a recent keynote for a Fortune 500 leadership event, I came across an an article from The Hindu newspaper from January 2009, which featured an interview with Vijay Govindarajan, Chief Innovation Consultant at General Electric in Chennai; he’s also a professor at the Tuck School of International Business.

Here’s a key observation from the article:

He has researched four U.S. slowdowns of the last half century: the oil shocks of the early 1970s, the crippling unemployment of the early 1980s, the recession of the early 1990s and the dotcom bust of 2000. “In each period, about 60 per cent of companies barely survived, while 30 per cent died. But the remaining ten per cent or so actually became breakthrough performers and that’s mostly because of the choices they made during the recession period.”

The key word there is choice. The choice that you need to make right now is to focus on growth, and particularly, growth through innovation.

Many of my recent events have involved having me on stage directly following the CEO of the client. I’ve been fascinated by what I’ve witnessed in the last few months. Many of these individuals, in their remarks, have quickly moved beyond talking about the recession (i.e. “we’ve got good strategies in place to contain costs to work our way through this thing“), and are immediately talking to their team about the growth markets and opportunities that they intend to pursue. They are challenging them to think about innovation in the context of opening new markets, enhancing existing revenue sources, transitioning the product line, moving beyond commodity products into a lineup with more inherent value; the list goes on.

It’s a critical and important leadership message, and I think it bodes well for the future potential of the economy. I have no difficulty finding and identifying growth opportunities in countless industries. It might take some time, and it’s difficult to think about growth with all the doom-and-gloom, but its there.

Read the article: Keep those ideas coming

Recent keynote: Innovating for growth in the restaurant industry!

February 26, 2009 by JimCarroll

I was thrilled to be the opening keynote speaker for Yum! Brands 2009 Global Leadership Meeting. It’s the world’s largest restaurant company.

The organization, the owner of such iconic brands such as KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, certainly finds itself in the midst of high-velocity change. There are fast paced trends in terms of new branding challenges and marketing methodologies (think Web 2.0), consumer behavior, and many other issues. Yet, there are tremendous opportunities for growth through innovation.

My keynote addressed a variety of trends which are impacting the QSR (quick service restaurant) industry today:

opportunities for global growth. Chain restaurants account for but 1% of China’s commercial food service sales, and in Europe, it is but 2%. (Compare that to the US, which is at 50%.) Clearly, growth will come from continued expansion into global markets.

rapid emergence of new methods of customer interaction. For example, in the next few years, we will likely see the emergence of contact-less payment technology, as our credit card infrastructure migrates to Blackberry, iPhone, and smart phones. This presents new opportunities in terms of customer contact.
new methods of brand and product promotion. Organizations must be able to scale to meet the demands of new intelligent infrastructure, and that will require a tremendous amount of innovation. Consider text messaging: Subway is working with a “pRomo” program that provides for remote retrieval of mobile coupon offers. With 147 million people already interacting globally on social networks via their mobile phones, there are tremendous opportunities for new methods of achieving brand and product awareness.
rapid change in consumer choice. Take the issue of health concerns and balanced diet. Fresh-cut snack foods grew from $6.8 billion in to $10.5 billion in a short time, according to the International Fresh-Cut Produce Association. Innovation comes from changing product mix to keep up with fast-changing consumers.
rapidly emerging new menus and taste trends. It’s estimated that new flavors now move from upscale kitchens to chain restaurants in 12 months, compared to 36 months 5 years ago. This means that faster innovation is not a luxury – it’s a necessity. Change faster, and you’ve got new growth-based products.
fast emerging industry issues. Consider the “greening of the industry.” The Grille Zone, a restaurant chain in Boston, generates about 15 pounds of waste per restaurant, compared to an industry average of 275 pounds. The Green Restaurant Association took 14 years to go to 90 restaurants; it’s now at close to 1,000, with thousands more going through the certification program. Growth can come from evolving a brand so that it matches the social desires of the customer base.

What I stress at events like this is that organizations need to realize that innovation isn’t just about “big innovation” — the launch of new products and services. There’s also the issue of “fast innovation” — in which success is defined by the ability of the organization to respond to rapidly changing products, markets, business models, economic trends, competitive moves, consumer trends and just about everything else. Innovation today is moving from more than just “products” to process, structure, capability, and speed.

Is the industry innovating? You bet: in October 2008, the US QSR market saw the biggest number of “Limited Time Offers,” a unique method of increasing sales, with 547 new menu items (up 40% from the prior year. Noted Obesity, Wellness, Fitness Week magazine in November 2008, “operators appear quite open to partnering with suppliers on new products with shorter lead times.”

Here’s the thing: in my keynotes, I focus on growth opportunities. There are enough people out there who are so focused on the doom and gloom of the economy, that they lose sight of the fact that if they focus on fast innovation — and keeping up with rapid trends — they can discover all kinds of new ways to grow the business.

Faster is the new fast. Think growth. Think innovation.

JimCarroll

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THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he
covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.